Posts Tagged ‘post-colonialism’

May 1, 1931—Thousands of people gather in the forest of Vincennes in the eastern outskirts of Paris to stroll around newly built re-creations of pagodas, palaces, and huts while observing the forest’s temporary tenants: whole tribes and families brought in from the French colonies in Africa and Asia. Meanwhile in Paris, the Surrealists are at work staging a counter-exhibition and publishing “The Truth About the[…..]

In a major solo exhibition, Ujamaa, at La Ferme du Buisson in the Parisian suburb of Noisiel, Kapwani Kiwanga addresses Tanzania’s uprisings. Known for using methodologies from the social sciences without being didactic, the artist draws on two significant moments in the history of the eastern African country to remember and question the ideals of pan-Africanism. The first is the 1905 revolt of Kinjeketile Ngwale,[…..]

Over a lifetime of visiting museums, you learn that all souvenirs have a price point, from the dollar-fifty commemorative postcard to the pieces in the collection itself. These prized mementos, selected, brought home, catalogued and displayed, represent the collector’s forays to classical or far-flung sites. My favorite disruption to this cycle is a hall of life-sized plaster casts of classical Greek and Roman architecture at[…..]